IEEE 802.1ag (IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks Virtual Bridged Local Area Networks Amendment 5: Connectivity Fault Management) defines protocols and practices for Carrier Ethernet Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM), the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein. It is an amendment to IEEE 802.1Q-2005 and was approved in 2007. IEEE 802.1ag is largely identical to ITU-T Recommendation G.8013/Y.1731 (11/13) “OAM functions and mechanisms for Ethernet based networks”, which additionally addresses performance management, the contents of which are also incorporated by reference herein. UP MEP functionality is widely used by service providers to monitor the end-to-end operation of Layer 2 services at the entry and exit of their maintenance domains. In today's competitive market, 99.999% service availability is of paramount importance to the providers. Therefore, it is imperative to enable OAM on all the services offered to the customers with the help of UP MEP functionality. In order to meet scalability requirements, Connectivity Fault Management (CFM) functionality is implemented in hardware versus software. Hardware manufacturers, such as Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) manufacturers and the like, have also reacted to market needs and tried to integrate OAM functionality within circuitry. However, most of the on-chip OAM solutions offer DOWN MEP functionality that only monitors service continuity of a point-to-point connection. Because DOWN MEPs don't fit into a provider's requirement of monitoring service connectivity between entry and exit of its maintenance domain, Layer 2 switching solutions have to deploy additional hardware (e.g., Network Processers (NPU), Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), etc.) to implement scalable UP MEP functionality. Software-based UP MEP solutions scale poorly and do not comply with warm restart requirements (i.e., maintaining operation during a software restart).